First Paragraph:Since the transition from
communism to competitive multiparty democracy, two general
elections have been held in the sovereign Czech Republic,
and three in both Hungary and Poland.1 With the exception of
the 1994 Hungarian elections, each of these elections
resulted in a parliament where no single political party
controlled a majority of the seats. In addition, with the
exception of the Czech elections of 1998, cabinets were
formed by coalitions of parties. The stability of the
various cabinets has shown variation both within and across
the countries. In Poland, no cabinet formed after a general
election survived in its original composition. In the Czech
Republic, the coalition cabinet formed after the 1996
elections was terminated after a little more than a year in
power, while the single-party minority cabinet formed by the
1998 polls has demonstrated remarkable stability. Of the
three states, only in Hungary have political parties managed
to maintain stable governments.

Figures and Tables:Table 1. Distribution of seats
in the Polish Sejm, 1991-7 (in percentages)
Table 2. Distribution of seats in the Hungarian
Orszaggyules, 1990-8 (in percentages)
Table 3. Distribution of seats in the Czech Chamber of
Deputies, 1996-8 (in percentages)
Table 4. Composition, size and causes of termination of
cabinets in the Czech Republic (1996 2001), Hungary
(1990-2001) and Poland (1991-2001)
Figure 1. Cabinet stability in terms of days in office and
survival rate
Figure 2. Average cabinet stability per legislature
Table 5. Cabinet types
Table 6. Types of legislature
Table 7. Arithmetically possible minimum winning
coalitions
Table 8. Results of the 2001 Polish and the 2002 Hungarian
and Czech elections
Table 9. Types of parliament in the Czech Republic, Hungary
and Poland
Figure 3. The ordinal location of political parties from
left to right
Table 10. Types of Cabinet in the Czech Republic, Hungary
and Poland

First Paragraph of Conclusion:In this article I have shown
that cabinet stability in the three consolidated CEE
democracies can be consistently accounted for in terms of
the theory of dominant and central players. The predictions
of the theory are accurate both within and across the three
states. Although the theory of dominant and central players
has received empirical evaluation so far only in the context
of mature Western multiparty democracies, it appears to have
strong significant predictive potential in the context of
new democracies as well. At the same time, however, the
impact of case selection must also be noted. The three
states studied in this article have had the most
consolidated party systems in the region. Whether the theory
would work equally well in the less institutionalized and
inchoate systems of other post-communist states remains to
be explored in future research.